The Politics of Language in Moldova

The Politics of Language in Moldova * JEFFREY CHINN Five years after the passage of legislation making Romanian the state language of Moldova, language remains the most difficult issue between Russians and Romanians on Moldova's Right Bank.1 Some Russians are learning Romanian, but most have made little effort to acquire even a rudimentary knowledge of the official language. This situation continues to frustrate the majority Romanians, especially those Moldovan political leaders who from the early days of the independence movement advocated the inclusion of the Russians and other minorities in the political, social and economic fabric of the new state. Moldova was the first of the former Soviet republics to pass a law making the language of the indigenous population the state language. This law, approved in August 1989, required those working in public services and enterprises to gain facility in both Russian and Romanian by 1994. Russians and Romanians agree that few initially took the law very seriously—1994 was perceived to be far off. Now that the deadline has arrived, many Russians continue to make excuses (inadequate books, teachers, not enough time), while the Romanian population, itself almost entirely bilingual, is becoming increasingly frustrated with its inability to use its own language for everyday activities such as calling a taxi or making a purchase in a store. Russian school-age children are making the shift, thereby providing optimism for the future, but many of their parents are resisting any accommodation to the new situation. Among Moldova's adult Russian population, language acquisition is unlikely to occur without a conscious effort to study and use Romanian. Russians typically interact with other Russians or expect Romanians (almost all of whom can communicate in Russian) to use Russian for inter-ethnic communication. Some Romanians find this expectation troubling. As one Romanian educator reported: “In the 1940s when the Soviet Union annexed Moldova, the Russians just pointed a gun at our heads and said to learn Russian. We did. Now, even after four years, the Russians say they can't learn Romanian. What's wrong with them?”2 Some Background Moldova's initial steps toward local autonomy under the Soviet umbrella soon resulted in calls for complete independence. Moldovans, led by the Popular Front, first formed groups in support of restructuring. These organizations seized the opportunity provided by Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost to open the door for the development of a nationalist movement. Indeed, the 1989 Moldovan Supreme Soviet debate on the language law brought Gorbachev himself into the local confrontation as he lobbied for maintaining Russian as the state language; at * Jeffrey Chinn is associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Missouri, Columbia. 310 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA the same time, this debate propelled Mircea Snegur, then chairman of the Moldovan Supreme Soviet and currently president, into the limelight for publicly opposing Gorbachev's position. One of the steps that mobilized Moldova's indigenous population was the passage of legislation in 1989 making Romanian the state language and returning to the Latin script for its transcription. When the Soviet Union annexed Romanian territories in 1940 and re-occupied them in 1944, the Latin alphabet, which had been used in Moldova to write the Romanian language, was replaced by the Cyrillic, and Russian increasingly became the language of education and public life. With the 1989 language law, Romanian again became the state language; Latin letters replaced Cyrillic for transcription of Romanian, and Russified names were returned to their previous designations. This process proceeded rapidly and relatively smoothly on the Right Bank of the Dniester River, although it became a primary point of controversy in the area controlled by the Russian minority on the Left Bank (Transdniestria) and in the Gagauz region to the south, which is inhabited by a Turkic nationality. Unlike in the Baltic states where the national language continued to be used after the states' incorporation into the Soviet Union, the Romanian language was excluded from almost all aspects of public life in Moldova during the period of Communist rule. Under both tsarist and Soviet rule, Russian was the language of the educated classes and dominated city life; Romanian was used in the villages by the peasantry. Much of the education in Moldova was conducted in Russian, including practically all beyond the primary level. Just under half of the population of the capital, Chişinău, was Romanian in 1989. Of this group, 12 percent claimed Russian as their native language, and 75 percent claimed to speak Russian. In contrast, only 11 percent of the Russians in Chişinău claimed competence in Romanian.3 When the political control loosened under Gorbachev, language became the first and most important point of contention, on the one hand mobilizing the Romanians and making them more cohesive, and on the other hand triggering the Russian backlash. Because language was initially characterized as a cultural issue, it provided a safer vehicle for national expression than an outright move for political independence. Russians in Moldova felt that giving Romanian superior (or even equal) status to Russian was just the first step toward union with Romania. Fear of such a union resulted in a strong Russian reaction. Making Romanian the state language and changing from the Cyrillic to the Latin script were the key issues of the national movement in 1988 and 1989. The question of alphabet was especially symbolic and was used by nationalists to provide an example of Russian cultural dominance. Symbolism and history, however, are not always congruent; nationalists often reconstruct the past to serve the political needs of the present: It is hard for Moldavian nationalists then and now to remember that the Cyrillic alphabet was not initially imposed on Romanians by an alien imperialist government. The Cyrillic script was used in Romanian until the middle of the nineteenth century. While linguistically it might make more sense to write Romanian with Latin letters, the logic of Latinity did not make itself felt until the 1840s. The first language of the Orthodox church, the princely courts, and high culture in the two principalities had been Old Church Slavonic since the tenth century. For its historic value the Cyrillic alphabet even had LANGUAGE IN MOLDOVA 311 supporters among some Moldavian nationalists. In spite of the present importance of the Latin alphabet in Moldavia, there was historically no necessary contradiction between patriotism and a lack of enmity for the Slavonic and Cyrillic influence on Romanian/Moldavian.4 Nonetheless, nationalists insisted that 1) Romanian become the state language and the vehicle for inter-ethnic communication, 2) that the Latin alphabet be adopted and 3) that the identity of Moldovan and Romanian be acknowledged. In contrast, during Soviet times, the affirmation of the view that “Moldavian” was a different language from “Romanian” and best understood by using the Cyrillic script was “a litmus test of one's acceptance of the legitimacy of Soviet rule.”5 As momentum gathered to change from Russian to Romanian, so did the fear on the part of the Russian-speaking population. The Popular Front organized rallies and collected over a million signatures in support of the language legislation. Russians felt threatened by the Romanian movement. Gagauzi, Ukrainians and other ethnic groups living in Moldova feared that they would have to learn two languages— Russian and Romanian—in addition to their native language.6 On the Right Bank, in spite of the statements by political leaders to the contrary, a strong anti-Russian sentiment was evident in the early days of Moldova's move toward independence: Moldavia's politicians are moving as fast as they can to divest themselves of all things Russian. The old Bessarabian part of Moldavia is fast becoming a de facto little Romania and Russian-speakers, the “uninvited guests” as officials call them, are being shown the door. Virtually all non-Romanian-speakers will have to pass language tests by 1995 or lose their jobs. In several firms, testing has already begun. Skilled Russians, Ukrainians and others are leaving.7 The leadership of the Popular Front indeed was pro-Romanian (including support for unification) and anti-Russian. The anti-Russian rhetoric soon moderated as the unification movement lost support and as both the government and the Parliament supported legislation to accommodate the linguistic and cultural interests of all the minority populations. However, the damage done by the initial nationalist rhetoric was hard to undo. The 1989 language law, though ultimately containing a compromise making both Romanian and Russian languages of inter-ethnic communication, provided the catalyst for the independence movements on the Left Bank and the Gagauz territory in the south. Crowther appropriately labels these independence movements “reactive nationalism.” Threatened by efforts of the majority ethnic group to destabilize the status quo in its own favor, members of the other minorities themselves entered into an independent political movement in order to increase the cost to the state of concessions to the Moldavians [Romanians]. The minorities also appealed to the national-level political leaders [Moscow] either 1) to defend the status quo, 2) to guarantee that any concessions to the Moldavian majority do not damage the position of minorities in the republic, or 3) if all else fails, to permit the other minorities to detach themselves from the present political unit and form a political entity of their own, one that would be directly responsible to the national-level government.8 312 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA What Has Changed? While the passage of five years has not resulted in the majority of Russians learning or even attempting to learn Romanian, it has brought a significant change of attitude. Even the director of the Russian Cultural Center in Chişinău, Alexander Belopotapov, now refers to Romanian as the “state” language.

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